Report of the General Councilto the Fourth Annual Congress, Basle September 1869

Written: by Marx in late August and early September 1869;First published: First published in English pamphlet, Report Of the Fourth Annual Congress Of the International Working Men's Association, held at Basle, in Switzerland, 1869, and in German pamphlet in Basle in September 1869;Text: according to the report;Transcribed: by director@marx.org.

Citizens,

The delegates of the different sections will give you detailed reports
on the progress of our Association in their respective countries. The report
of your General Council will mainly relate to the guerrilla fights between
capital and labourwe mean the strikes which during the last year have
perturbed the continent of Europe, and were said to have sprung neither
from the misery of the labourer nor from the despotism of the capitalist,
but from the secret intrigues of our Association.

A few weeks after the meeting of our last Congress, a memorable
strike on the part of the ribbon-weavers and silk-dyers occurred in Basle,
a place which to our days has conserved much of the features of a mediaeval
town with its local traditions, its narrow prejudices, its purse-proud
patricians, and its patriarchal rule of the employer over the employed.
Still, a few years ago a Basle manufacturer boasted to an English secretary
of embassy, that

"the position of the master and the man was on a better footing here
than in England", that "in Switzerland the operative who leaves a good
master for better wages would be despised by his own fellow-workmen",
and that "our advantage lies principally in the length of the working time
and the moderation of the wages".

You see, patriarchalism, as modified by modern influences comes
to thisthat the master is good, and that his wages are bad, that the
labourer feels like a mediaeval vassal, and is exploited like a modern
wages-slave.

That patriarchalism may further be appreciated from an official
Swiss inquiry into the factory employment of children and the state of
the primary public schools. It was ascertained that

"the Basle school atmosphere is the worst in the world, that while
in the free air carbonic acid forms only 4 parts of 10,000, and in closed
rooms should not exceed 10 parts, it rose in Basle common schools to 20-81
parts in the forenoon, and to 53-94 in the afternoon". [1]

Thereupon a member of the Basle Great Council, Mr. Thurneysei, coolly replied,

"Don't allow yourselves to be frightened. The parents have passed through
schoolrooms as bad as the present ones, and yet they have escaped with
their skins safe". [2]

It will now be understood that an economical revolt on the part of the
Basle workmen could not but mark an epoch in the social history of Switzerland.
Nothing more characteristic than the starting-point of the movement. There
existed an old custom for the ribbon-weavers to have a few hours' holiday
on Michaelmas. [3] The weavers claiming this small privilege
at the usual time in the factory of Messrs. Dubary and Sons, one of the
masters declared, in a harsh voice and with imperious gesticulation,

"Whoever leaves the factory will be dismissed at once and for ever".
[4]

Finding their protestations in vain, 104 out of 172 weavers left the workshop
without, however, believing in their definite dismissal, since master and
men were bound by written contract to give a fourteen days' notice to quit.
On their return the next morning they found the factory surrounded by gendarmes,
keeping off the yesterday's rebels, with whom all their comrades now made
common cause. [5] Being thus suddenly thrown out of work,
the weavers with their families were simultaneously ejected from the cottages
they rented from their employers, who, into the bargain, sent circular
letters round to the shopkeepers [6] to debar the houseless
ones from all credit for victuals. [7] The struggle thus
begun lasted from the 9th of November, 1868, to the spring of 1869. The
limits of our report do not allow us to enter upon its details. It suffices
to state that it originated in a capricious and spiteful act of capitalist
despotism, in a cruel lock-out, which led to strikes, from time to time
interrupted by compromises, again and again broken on the part of the masters,
and that it culminated in the vain attempt of the Basle "High and Honourable
State Council" to intimidate the working people by military measures and
a quasi state of siege.

During their sedition the workmen were supported by the International
Working Men's Association. But that was not all. [8]
That society the masters said had first smuggled the modern spirit of rebellion
into the good old [9] town of Basle. To again expel that
mischievous intruder from Basle became, therefore, their great preoccupation.
Hard they tried, though in vain, to enforce the withdrawal from it as a
condition of peace, upon their subjects. Getting generally worsted in their
war with the International they vented their spleen in strange pranks.
Owning some industrial branch establishments at Lörrach, in Baden,
[10] these republicans induced the grand-ducal official
[11] to suppress the International section at that place,
a measure which, however, was soon after rescinded by the Baden Government.
The Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung, a paper of world-wide circulation,
presuming to report on the Basle events in an impartial spirit, the angry
worthies threatened it in foolish letters with the withdrawal of their
subscriptions. [12] To London they expressly sent a
messenger on the fantastic errand of ascertaining the dimensions of the
International general "treasury-box". Orthodox Christians as they are,
if they had lived at the time of nascent Christianity, they would, above
all things, have spied into St. Paul's banking accounts at Rome.

Their clumsily savage proceedings brought down upon them some
ironical lessons of worldly wisdom on the part of the Geneva capitalist
organs. [13] Yet, a few months later, the uncouth Basle
vestrymen might have returned the compliment with usurious interest to
the Geneva men of the world.

In the month of March there broke out in Geneva a buildings' trade
strike, and a compositors' strike, both bodies being affiliated to the
International. The builders' strike was provoked by the masters setting
aside a convention solemnly entered upon with their workmen a year ago.
The compositors' strike was but the winding-up of a ten years' quarrel
which the men had during all that time in vain tried to settle by five
consecutive commissions. As in Basle, the masters transformed at once their
private feuds with their men into a state crusade against the International
Working Men's Association. [14]

The Geneva State Council dispatched policemen to receive at the
railway stations, and sequestrate from all contact with the strikers, such
foreign workmen as the masters might contrive to inveigle from abroad.
It allowed the "Jeunesse Dorée", the hopeful loafers of "La Jeune
Suisse", [15] armed with revolvers, to assault, in the
streets and places of public resort, workmen and workwomen. It launched
its own police ruffians on the working people on different occasions, and
signally on the 24th May, when it enacted at Geneva, on a small scale,
the Paris scenes which Raspail has branded as "Les orgies infernales des
casse-têtes". When the Geneva workmen passed in public meeting an
address to the State Council, calling upon it to inquire into these infernal
police orgies, [16] the State Council replied by a sneering
rebuke. [17] It evidently wanted, at the behest of its
capitalist superiors, [18] to madden the Geneva people
into an émeute, to stamp that émeute out by
the armed force, to sweep the International from the Swiss soil, and to
subject the workmen to a Decembrist regime. This scheme was baffled by
the energetic action and moderating influence of our Geneva federal Committee.
The masters had at last to give way.

And now listen to some of the invectives of the Geneva capitalists
and their press-gang against the International. In public meeting they
passed an address to the State Council, where the following phrase occurs:

"The International Committee at Geneva ruins the Canton of Geneva by
decrees sent from London and Paris; it wants here to suppress all industry
and all labour." [19]

One of their journals stated

"That the leaders of the International were secret agents of the Emperor
[20] who, at the opportune moment, were very likely
to turn out public accusers against this little Switzerland of ours". [21]

And this on the part of the men who had just shown themselves so eager
to transplant at a moment's notice the Decembrist regime to the Swiss soil,
on the part of financial magnates, the real rulers of Geneva and other
Swiss towns, whom all Europe knows to have long since been converted from
citizens of the Swiss republic into mere feudatories of the French Crédit
Mobilier and other international swindling associations.

The massacres by which the Belgian Government did answer in April
last to the strikes of the puddlers at Seraing and the coal-miners of Borinage,
have been fully exposed in the address of the General Council to the workmen
of Europe and the United States. [22] We considered
this address the more urgent since, with that constitutional model government,
such working men's massacres are not an accident, but an institution. The
horrid military drama was succeeded by a judicial farce. In the proceedings
against our Belgian General Committee at Brussels, whose domiciles were
brutally broken in by the police, and many of whose members were placed
under secret arrest, the judge of instruction finds the letter of a workman,
asking for 500 "Internationales", and he at once jumps to the conclusion
that 500 fighting-men were to be dispatched to the scene of action. The
500 "Internationales" were 500 copies of the Internationale,
the weekly organ of our Brussels Committee.

A telegram to Paris by a member of the International, ordering
a certain quantity of powder, is raked up. [23] After
a prolonged research, the dangerous substance is really laid hand on at
Brussels. It is powder for killing vermin. Last, not least, the Belgian
police flattered itself, in one of its domiciliary visits, to have got
at that phantom treasure which haunts the great mind of the continental
capitalist, viz.: the International treasure, the main stock of which is
safely hoarded at London, but whose offsets travel continually to all the
continental seats of the Association. The Belgian official inquirer thought
it buried in a certain strong box, hidden in a dark place. He gets at it,
opens it forcibly, and there was foundsome pieces of coal. Perhaps,
if touched by the hand of the police, the pure International gold turns
at once into coal.

Of the strikes that, in December, 1868, infested several French
cotton districts, the most important was that at Sotteville-lès-Rouen.
The manufacturers of the Department de la Somme had not long ago met at
Amiens, in order to consult how they might undersell [24]
the English manufacturers in the English market itself. Having made sure
that, besides protective duties, the comparative lowness of French wages
had till now mainly enabled them to defend France from English cottons,
they naturally inferred that a still further lowering of French wages would
allow them to invade England with French cottons. The French cotton-workers,
they did not doubt, would feel proud at the idea of defraying the expenses
of a war of conquest which their masters had so patriotically resolved
to wage on the other side of the Channel. Soon after it was bruited about
that the cotton manufacturers of Rouen and its environs had, in secret
conclave, agreed upon the same line of policy. Then an important reduction
of wages was suddenly proclaimed at Sotteville-lés-Rouen, and then
for the first time the Normand weavers rose against the encroachments of
capital. They acted under the stir of the moment. Neither had they before
formed a trades union nor provided for any means of resistance. In their
distress they appealed to the International committee at Rouen, which found
for them some immediate aid from the workmen of Rouen, the neighbouring
districts, and Paris. Towards the end of December, 1868, the General Council
was applied to by the Rouen Committee, at a moment of utmost distress throughout
the English cotton districts, of unparalleled misery in London, and a general
depression in all branches of British [25] industry.
This state of things has continued in England to this moment. Despite such
highly unfavourable circumstances, the General Council thought that the
peculiar character of the Rouen conflict would stir the English workmen
to action. This was a great opportunity to show the capitalists that their
international industrial warfare, carried on by screwing wages down now
in this country, now in that, would be checked at last by the international
union of the working classes. To our appeal the English workmen replied
at once by a first contribution to Rouen, and the London Trades Council
resolved to summon, in unison with the General Council, a metropolitan
monster meeting on behalf of their Normand brethren. These proceedings
were stopped by the news of the sudden cessation of the Sotteville strike.
The miscarriage of that economical revolt was largely compensated for by
its moral results. It enlisted the Normand cotton-workers into the revolutionary
army of labour, it gave rise to the birth of trades unions at Rouen Elboeuf,
Darnetal, and the environs; and it sealed anew the bond of fraternity between
the English and French working classes.

During the winter and spring of 1869 the propaganda of our Association
in France was paralysed, consequent upon the violent dissolution of our
Paris section in 1868, the police chicaneries in the departments, and the
absorbing interest of the French general elections.

The elections once over, numerous strikes exploded in the Loire
mining districts, at Lyons, and many other places. The economical facts
revealed during these struggles between masters and men, struck the public
eye like so many dissolving views of the high-coloured fancy pictures of
working-class prosperity under the auspices of the Second Empire. The claims
of redress on the part of the workmen were of so moderate a character,
and so urgent a nature that, after some show of angry resistance, they
had to be conceded, one and all. The only strange feature about those strikes
was their sudden explosion after a seeming lull, and the rapid succession
in which they followed each other. Still, the reason of all this was simple
and palpable. Having, during the elections, successfully tried their hands
against their public despot, the workmen were naturally led to try them
after the elections against their private despots. In one word, the elections
had stirred their animal spirits. The governmental press, of course, paid
as it is to misstate and misinterpret unpleasant facts, traced these events
to a secret mot d'ordre from the London General Council, which,
they said, sent their emissaries, from place to place, to teach the otherwise
highly satisfied French workmen that it was a bad thing to be overworked,
underpaid, and brutally treated. A French police organ, published at London,
the "International'(see its number of August 3)has condescended
to reveal to the world the secret motives of our deleterious activity.

"The strangest feature," it says, "is that the strikes were ordered
to break out in such countries where misery is far from making itself felt.
These unexpected explosions, occurring so opportunely for certain neighbours
of ours, who had first to apprehend war, make many people ask themselves
whether these strikes took place on the request of some foreign Machiavelli,
who had known how to win the good graces of this all-powerful Association."
[26]

At the very moment when this French police print impeached us of embarrassing
the French Government by strikes at home, in order to disembarrass Count
Bismarck from war abroad, a Prussian paper [27] accused
us of embarrassing the Northern German Bund with strikes, in order to crush
German industry for the benefit of foreign manufactures.

The relations of the International to the French strikes we shall
illustrate by two cases of a typical character. In the one case, the strike
of St. Étienne and the following massacre at Ricamarie, the French
Government itself will no longer dare to pretend that the International
had anything whatever to do with it. In the Lyons case, it was not the
International that threw the workmen into strikes, but, on the contrary,
it was the strikes that threw the workmen into the International.

The miners of St. Étienne, Rive-de-Giers, and Firminy had
calmly, but firmly, requested the managers of the mining companies to reduce
the working day, numbering 12 hours hard underground labour, and revise
the wages tariff. Failing in their attempt at a conciliatory settlement,
they struck on the 11th of June. For them it was of course a vital question
to secure the co-operation of the miners that had not yet turned out to
combine with them. [28] To prevent this, the managers
of the mining companies requested and got from the Prefect of the Loire
a forest of bayonets. On the 12th of June, the strikers found the coal
pits under strong military guard. To make sure of the zeal of the soldiers
thus lent to them by the government, the mining companies paid each soldier
a franc daily. The soldiers paid the companies back by catching, on the
16th June, [29] about 60 miners eager to get at a conversation
with their brethren in the coal pits. These prisoners were in the afternoon
of the same day escorted to St. Étienne by a detachment (150 men),
of the fourth regiment of the line. Before these stout warriors set out,
an engineer of the Dorian mines distributed them 60 bottles of brandy,
telling them at the same time, they ought to have a sharp eye on their
prisoners' gang, these miners being savages, barbarians, ticket-of-leave
men. What with the brandy, and what with the sermon, a bloody collision
was thus prepared for. Followed on their march by a crowd of miners, with
their wives and children, surrounded by them on a narrow defile on the
heights of the Moncel, Quartier Ricamarie, requested to surrender the prisoners,
and on their refusal, attacked by a volley of stones, the soldiers, without
any preliminary warning, fired with their chassepots[30]
pell-mell into the crowd, killing 15 persons, amongst whom were two women
and an infant, and dangerously wounding a considerable number. The tortures
of the wounded were horrible. One of the sufferers was a poor girl of 12
years, Jenny Petit, whose name will live immortal in the annals of the
working-class martyrology. Struck by two balls from behind, one of which
lodged in her leg, while the other passed through her back, broke her arm,
and escaped through her right shoulder. "Les chassepots avaient encore
fait merveille."

This time, however, the government was not long in finding out
that it had committed not only a crime, but a blunder. It was not hailed
as the saviour of society by the middle class. The whole municipal council
of St. Étienne tendered its resignation in a document, denouncing
the scoundrelism of the troops, and insisting upon their removal from the
town. [31] The French press rung with cries of horror!
Even such conservative prints as the Moniteur universe! opened subscriptions
for the victims. [32] The government had to remove
the odious regiment from St. Étienne. Under such difficult circumstances,
it was a luminous idea to sacrifice on the altar of public indignation
a scapegoat always at hand, [33] the International Working
Men's Association. At the judicial trial of the so-called rioters, the
act of accusation divided them into 10 categories, very ingeniously shading
their respective darkness of guilt. The first class, the most deeply tinged,
consisted of workmen [34] more particularly suspected
to have obeyed some secret mot d'ordre from abroad, given out by
the International. The evidence was, of course, overwhelming, as the following
short extract from a French paper will show:

"The interrogatory of the witnesses did not allow 'neatly' to
establish the participation of the International Association. The witnesses
affirm only the presence, at the head of the bands, of some unknown
people, wearing white frocks and caps. None of the unknown ones have
been arrested, or appear in the dock. To the question: do you believe
in the intervention of the International Association? a witness replies:
I believe it but without any proofs whatever!"[35]

Shortly after the Ricamarie massacres, the dance of economical revolts
was opened at Lyons by the silk-winders, most of them females. In their
distress they appealed to the International, [36] which,
mainly by its members in France and Switzerland, helped them to carry the
day. Despite all attempts at police intimidation, they publicly proclaimed
their adhesion to our Society, [37] and entered it formally
by paying the statutory contributions to the General Council. At Lyons,
as before at Rouen, the female workers played a noble and prominent part
in the movement. Other Lyons trades have since followed in the track of
the silk-winders. Some 10,000 new members were thus gained for us in a
few weeks amongst that heroic population which more than thirty years ago
inscribed upon its banner the watchword of the modern Proletariat: "Vivre
en travaillant ou mourir en combattant!" [38]

Meanwhile the French Government continues its petty tribulations
against the International. At Marseilles our members were forbidden meeting
for the election of a delegate to Basle. The same paltry trick was played
in other towns. But the workmen on the Continent, as elsewhere, begin at
last to understand that the surest way to get one's natural rights is to
exercise them at one's personal risk.

The Austrian workmen, and especially those of Vienna, although
entering their crass [39] movement only after the events
of 1866, have at once occupied a vantage-ground. They marched at once under
the banners of socialism and the International, which, by their delegates
at the recent Eisenach Congress, they have now Joined en masse.

If anywhere, the liberal middle class has exhibited in Austria
its selfish instincts, its mental inferiority, and its petty spite against
the working class. Their ministry, seeing the empire distracted and threatened
by an internecine struggle of races and nationalities, pounces upon the
workmen who alone proclaim the fraternity of all races and nationalities.
The middle class itself, which has won its new position not by any heroism
of its own, but only by the signal disaster of the Austrian army, hardly
able as it is, and knows itself to be, to defend its new conquests from
the attacks of the dynasty, the aristocracy, and the clerical party, nevertheless
wastes its best energies in the mean attempt to debar the working class
from the rights of combination, public meeting, free press and free thought.
In Austria, as in all other states of continental Europe, the International
has supplanted the ci-devant spectre rouge.[40]
When, on the 13th of July, a workmen's massacre on a small scale was enacted
at Brunn, the cottonopolis of Moravia, the event was traced to the secret
instigations of the International, whose agents, however, were unfortunately
invested with the rare gift of rendering themselves invisible. [41]
When some leaders of the Vienna work-people figured before the judicial
bench, the public accuser stigmatised them as tools of the foreigner. Only,
to show how conscientiously he had studied the matter, he committed the
little error of confounding the middle-class League of Peace and Liberty
with the working men's International Association.

If the workmen's movement was thus harassed in Cis-Leithanian
Austria, it has been recklessly prosecuted in Hungary. On this point the
most reliable reports from Pest and Pressburg have reached the General
Council. One example of the treatment of the Hungarian workmen by the public
authorities may suffice. Herr von Wenckheim, the Hungarian Home Minister,
was just staying at Vienna on public business. [42]
Having for months been interdicted from public meetings and even from entertainments
destined for the collection of the funds of a sick club, the Pressburg
workmen sent at last delegates to Vienna, [43] then
and there to lay their grievances before the illustrious Herr von Wenckheim.
[44] Puffing and blowing his cigar, the illustrious
one received them with the bullying apstrophe, [45]
"Are you workmen? Do you work hard? [46] For nothing
else you have to care. You do not want public clubs; and if you dabble
in politics, we shall know what measures to take against you. I shall do
nothing for you. Let the workmen grumble to their heart's content!" To
the question of the workmen, whether the good pleasure of the police was
still to rule uppermost, the liberal [47] minister replied:
"Yes, under my responsibility." After a somewhat prolonged but useless
explanation the workmen left the minister telling him, "Since state matters
influence the workmen's condition, the workmen must occupy themselves with
politics, and they will certainly do so." [48]

In Prussia and the rest of Germany, the past year was distinguished
by the formation of trades unions all over the country. At the recent Eisenach
Congress the delegates of 150,000 [49], German workmen,
from Germany proper, Austria, and Switzerland, have organised a new democratic
social party, with a programme literally embodying the leading principles
of our Statutes. [50] Debarred by law from forming sections
of our Association, they have, nevertheless, formally entered it by resolving
[51] to take individual cards of membership from the
General Council. At its congress at Barmen, the Allgemeine Deutsche Arbeiterverein
has also reaffirmed its adhesion to the principles of our Association,
but simultaneously declared the Prussian law forbade them joining us. [52]

New branches of our Association have sprung up at Naples, in Spain,
and in Holland.

At Barcelona a Spanish, and at Amsterdam a Dutch organ of our
Association is now being issued. [53]

The laurels plucked by the Belgian Government on the glorious
battlefields of Seraing and Frameries seem really to have roused the angry
jealousy of the Great Powers. No wonder, then, that England also
had this year to boast a workman's massacre of its own. The Welsh coal-miners,
at Leeswood Great Pit, near Mold, in Denbighshire, had received sudden
notice of a reduction of wages by the manager of those works, whom, long
since, they had reason to consider a most incorrigible petty oppressor.
Consequently, they collected aid from the neighbouring collieries, and,
besides assaulting him, attacked his house, and carried all his furniture
to the railway station, these wretched men fancying in their childish ignorance
thus to get rid of him for good and all. Proceedings were of course taken
against the rioters; but one of them was rescued by a mob of 1,000 men,
and conveyed out of the town. [54] On the 28th May,
two of the ringleaders were to be taken before the magistrates of Mold
by policemen under the escort of a detachment of the 4th Regiment of the
line, "The King's Own". A crowd of miners, trying to rescue the prisoners,
and, on the resistance of the police and the soldiers, showering stones
at them, the soldierswithout any previous warningreturned the shower
of stones by a shower of bullets from their breechloaders (Snider fusils).
[55] Five persons, two of them females, [56]
were killed, and a great many wounded. So far there is much analogy between
the Mold and the Ricamarie massacres, but here it ceases. In France, the
soldiers were only responsible to their commander. In England, they had
to pass through a coroner's jury inquest; but this coroner was a deaf and
daft of fool, who had to receive the witnesses' evidence through an ear
trumpet, and the Welsh jury, who backed him, were a narrowly prejudiced
class jury. They declared the massacre "Justifiable Homicide". [57]

In France, the rioters were sentenced from 3 to 18 months' imprisonment,
and soon after, amnestied. In England, they were condemned to 10 years'
penal servitude! In France,. the whole press resounded with cries of indignation
against the troops. In England, the press was all smiles for the soldiers,
and all frowns for their victims! Still, the English workmen have gained
much by losing a great and dangerous illusion. Till now they fancied to
have their lives protected by the formality of the Riot Act, and the subordination
of the military to the civil authorities. They know now, from the official
declaration of Mr. Bruce, the liberal Home Minister, in the House of Commons
-- firstly, that without going through the premonitory process of reading
the Riot Act, any country magistrate, some fox-hunter or parson, has the
right to order the troops to fire on what he may please to consider a riotous
mob; and, secondly, that the soldier may give fire on his own hook, on
the plea of self-defence. [58] The liberal Minister
forgot to add that, under these circumstances, every man ought to be armed,
at public expense, with a breachloader, in self-defence against the soldier.

The following resolution was passed at the recent General Congress
of the English Trades Unions at Birmingham:

"That as local organisations of labour have almost disappeared before
organisations of a national character, so we believe the extension of the
principle of free trade, which induces between nations such a competition
that the interest of the workman is liable to be lost sight of and sacrificed
in the fierce international race between capitalists, demands that such
organisations should be still further extended and made international.
And as the International Working Men's Association endeavours to consolidate
and extend the interests of the toiling masses, which are everywhere identical,
this Congress heartily recommends that Association to the support of the
working men of the United Kingdom, especially of all organised bodies,
and strongly urges them to become affiliated to that body, believing that
the realisation of its principles would also conclude to lasting peace
between the nations of the earth."

During last May, a war between the United States and England seemed imminent.
Your General Council, therefore, sent an address to Mr. Sylvis, the President
of the American National Labour Union, calling on the United States' working
class to command peace where their would-be masters shouted war.

The sudden death of Mr. Sylvis, that valiant champion of our cause,
will justify us in concluding this report, as an homage to his memory,
by his reply to our letter: [59]

"Your favour of the 12th instant, with address enclosed, reached me
yesterday. I am very happy to receive such kindly words from our fellow-working
men across the water: our cause is a common one. It is war between poverty
and wealth: labour occupies the same low condition, and capital is the
same tyrant in all parts of the world. Therefore I say our cause is a common
one. I, in behalf of the working people of the United States, extend to
you, and through you to those you represent, and to all the downtrodden
and oppressed sons and. daughters of toil in Europe, the right hand of
fellowship. Go ahead in the good work you have undertaken, until the most
glorious success crowns your efforts. That is our determination. Our late
war resulted in the building up of the most infamous monied aristocracy
on the face of the earth. This monied power is fast eating up the substance
of the people. We have made war upon it, and we mean to win. If we can,
we will win through the ballot-box: if not, then we will resort to sterner
means. A little blood-letting is sometimes necessary in desperate cases."
[60]

By order of the Council,
R. Applegarth, Chairman
Cowell Stetney, Treasurer
J. George Eccarius, General Secretary.

Notes

BACKGROUND: (From the Collected Works.) Marx drew up this
report, on the General Council's instructions, in late August and early
September 1869 for the Basle Congress, which was to be held in September.
(As can be seen from Dupont's letter to Marx of September 1, 1869, Marx's
report was discussed at the General Council meeting on that day. The minutes
of this meeting were not recorded in the Minute Book.) Marx did not attend
the congtress but took an active part in its preparations. The Minute Book
contains records of his speeches in the General Council during the discussion
of the following items on the congress agenda: the agrarian question (July
6 1869), the right to inheritance (July 20) and public education (August
10 and 17).

Having discussed the land question for the second time, the Basle
Congress decided by a majority vote in favour of abolishing private property
in land and turning it into common property, thereby confirming the socialist
platform of the International scale, to strengthen the International organizationally
and to entend the General Council's powers. At this congress the supporters
of Marx's scientific socialism clashed openly for the first time with the
followers of Bakunin's anarchism over the abolition of the right of inheritance.

The text of the General Council's report, written by Marx in English,
was read in German and French at the congress of September 7, and published
in German in Marx's translation as a separate pamphlet, Bericht des
Generalraths der Internationalen Arbeiter-Association an den IV, allgemeinen
Congress in Basel, Basle, 1869. In English and French it was published
together with the Minutes of the Congress sittings.

3 In the German pamphlet this sentence
reads: "According to an old custom the workers in Basle take a quarter
of a day off on the last day of the Autumn Fair." The next sentence begins
as follows: "When, on November 9, 1868 the weavers claimed..."

5 Instead of "with whom all their comrades
now made common cause" the German pamphlet has two separate sentences:
"Even the weavers who had not taken a quarter of a day off did not want
to go in either. The general slogan was: 'All or none.'"

6 The German pamphlet has "butchers,
bakers, grocers."

7 J. Ph. Becker, op. cit, p. 5.

8 This sentence is omitted in the Gertnan
pamphlet.

9 In the German pamphlet the word "lmperial"
has been added.

10 The German pamphlet has "at Lörrach,
a saden horder village situated near Basle."

11 The German has "local magistrate".

12 Allgemeine Zeitung, Nos.
9 and 13, January 9 and 13, 1869.

13 The German pamphlet has "the Geneva
capitalists".

14 See L'Égalité.
Nos. 10, 11 and 13 March 27, April 3 and 17 1869.

15 The words "the hopeful loafers of
La Jeune Suisse'" are omitted in the German pamphlet.

41 The German pamphlet has: "whose
agents were in possession of magic caps".

42 The German pamphlet has "with thr
Hungarian delegation".

43 In the German pamphlet the following words
have been added: "among whom was the well-known agitator Niemtzik".

44 The German pamphlet has "before
the Home Minister".

45 Instead of "Puffing and blowing
his cigar ... with the bullying apostrophe" the german pamphlet has: "It
was hard to receive audience from this high gentleman, and when the ministerial
room at last opened, the workers were met by the minister in a manner which
was quite disrespectful."

46 In the German pamphlet the following
words have been added: "asked the minister puffing his cigar and twisting
it his mouth".